We are, in the best case scenario, minting a lost generation in real time. This will become increasingly clear over the next 2 years.
Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)
Meanwhile, simonw and his retiree friends are having the "time of their lives", so that's good I guess :)
Radical changes bring radical opportunities too, so "having the time of their lives" is not necessarily incompatible with "adapting to profound disruption."
Consider that the traits that make them optimistic about this technology are exactly the traits required to navigate this Brave New World.
The technique of feeding money into the slot-machine that generates tokens so that it can maybe generate what you want and you get the results at scale if you have enough money paradigm just isn't accessible to many people. In this context Simonw and Karpathy are starting to look more and more like degenerate gamblers who admonish everyone else for not joining in, while telling us all that the perks the casino gives them are just fabulous and we're all missing out.
And maybe you'll say "Yeah but things will get cheaper in the future, they're just early adapters who can afford it..." well, will it? And will those people make it to that shining beacon on the hill future? Or will they find themselves out of a job because of the current economic calamity that is unfolding as a result of election of an American Nero who is supported by the ultrawealthy tech oligarchs who are brining this technology into existance?
Do these people actually want to improve the lives of the common people -- or are they more concerned with getting a high score in the form of the amount in their bank account and clout on social media?
I'm a bit more optimistic about democratized access to AI. Even today's weaker open source/weight models are plenty powerful enough to supercharge our individual capabilities, and based on current trends, they won't be more than 3 - 6 months behind the frontier models. This may not bode well for the AI labs because their moat is always evaporating, but it's a huge boon to us plebs.
Point me to something real that happens rights now that would support such optimistic vision.
I always read on how much power AI can bring to common people, and it it always without any evidence whatsoever.
Not really "much power" but more like a viable alternative: in a world where everybody needs LLMs to do their white-collar work, you can't force me to use your paid LLM subscription as my local-running model is close enough.
But now you don't need their money, and so the capital class lose their power over you.
As an example, I'm iterating on a niche product based on computer vision -- something I had no background in when I started -- that in the past would have taken a team of 2 - 3 and at least a semester or two of an advanced course in computer vision. Instead, I'm solo bootstrapping this project.
There are multiple accounts like mine, and you can find many comments on HN or other forums to this effect. Now, I know this is a very tough path for most people because, well, now everybody needs to be an entrepreneur, but a path exists.
AI is a double-edged sword, and more people need to become aware of the edge that is available to us.
2. You're stance is equivalent to "show me concrete evidence that the advent of the automobile will have a positive impact on horse-drawn buggy coachmen" while I'm saying, "the automobile is coming, we all better get off our high horses and learn how to drive."
Consider that they're closer to death than birth and are unlikely to survive into the shit-hole world they're creating. Not passing on those traits to the next generation is a massive failure. These assholes aren't disrupting their own lives, just the poor slobs who haven't made it yet.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483567 is pretty much (paraphrasing) sucks to be you if you can't make it work.
Well, people who are not above a threshold of experience yet are not in a position to self-assess and course-correct if their long term learning is being affected. And even less so if there is pressure to be hyper-productive with the help of AI.
Speculating here but I think even seniors who rely on AI all the time and enjoy the enhanced output are going to end up with impostor syndrome over the things they suspect they can no longer do without AI, and FOMO about all the projects they haven't yet attempted with AI despite working as hard as they can.
One can argue, convincingly perhaps, that Anthropic isn’t right and/or is marketing, but what they’re saying could be complete BS but the fact that there is doubt suggests that most people believe that no one can hold it right exists.
I’m quite pro AI, but given the radical asymmetry between the upside vs the downsides (the upside is at best maximum bliss for all existing humans, which has a finite limit, while the downside is the end of humanity which is essentially infinitely bad), our march forward in this area needs to be at least slightly more responsible than what we are doing now.
At most I've seen him overhype some stuff, but probably less than most in the the tech-influencer sphere.
It wasn’t impressive when you wrote it by hand, it’s still not impressive when an AI does all the work for you.
Mocking the former is now culturally acceptable on HN, the latter not so much.
I have the opposite impression. In the past, I'd very often react "WTF who'd ever want to use it?" in my mind, whereas the comments were very kind and supportive.
Now, whenever someone submits their AI slop, they mostly hear some comments about this. The very fact that this whole thread is about bashing Simon speaks for itself. The HN community is split between those aggressively promoting it, those hating it, and the rest of us using it in one way or another, not yet sure about full-scale consequences for the future, and quite frankly powerless about it.
I think we can agree with this. The system that determines the fair distribution of productivity gains today will have to change entirely.
Would you rather feel justified in the knowledge that the Luddites were principally right and resist, or would you rather learn the lesson of their fate and adapt?
How would you even resist? Say the entire US population pushes back and gets protectionist regulations passed; there will always be hungry people just a few 100ms ping away willing to outcompete you using AI.
Really, at this point there are only two choices: change society to move beyond Capitalism, or adapt to the new economic reality. Either choice is valid, and I suspect eventually one will lead to the other, but there is no putting the genie back in the bottle.
Keep your poison. If everyone adapted this way, we would not have worker rights, and our children would still work in mines and factories for pennies.
After several hundred billions dollars spent on LLMs, they can almost reproduce the capabilities of a partially deaf visually impaired secretary with severe brain damage.
Humans are cheaper, and they can actually learn things. Even the brain-damaged secretary can learn better than an LLM can, and it doesn't cost of hundreds of millions to train one.
Computers have been automating things for decades. My father had a private secretary at work, something considered normal for a mid-career executive back then (he was an engineer!). I've done very well in my career but a private secretary is quite out of reach. That doesn't mean that we had a "lost generation" on our hands.
And yesterday a friend showed me what his 11 year old was vibing up with Claude Code. A whole web app he can use to help organize some stuff with his friends related to Roblox (I dunno what it was meant to be, you had to log in for most of it). The kid is amazed that his father understands all the mysterious symbols Claude generates. And he probably always will, the same way I listen to stories about how my father could fix car engines with mild amazement as well.
There's a huge market for doom stories out there and the NYT is a rag that was just yesterday reporting that Adam Back was Satoshi based on nothing deeper than the journalists gut feeling. "Studies" in social science can show whatever the author wants, and the authors want clicks from their AI-hating left wing readership. Stay skeptical!
This says more about how companies have chosen to allocate pay in the current era than anything about technology though, no?
Ban AI development?
> Ban AI development?
The Bulterian Jihad will never be less appealing than it is today.
In the USA you can't even get healthcare without a job. Meanwhile tech companies are dumping billions into the race to make humans unemployable. So yeah, until people feel like their leaders can be trusted to have their back, they're going to be anxious.
It's fast approaching, and the sooner it gets here the sooner the masses turn to a Butlerian Jihad.
Priorities in the wrong order.
Fixing politics is first otherwise you'll never get to anything like Star Trek, not even close, not even externally resembling it.
A relatively tiny percent of mortgages not getting paid in 2007 & 2008 caused a global financial crisis. If even just 10% of current office workers lose their jobs and quit paying their mortgages, their car loans, their car insurance, etc things will go bad fast. And realistically, it's going to be more like 80% of office jobs gone in the next 10 years.
People with nothing to lose will feel empowered by taking everything from the people who they feel are responsible for taking everything from them.
There's a chance this kind of thing becomes a social contagion that spreads, much like suicide or school shootings.
I'm not sure what the solution is to it once it starts. I guess people like Thiel won't be able to do antichrist talks at the Vatican anymore.
I think that's why you saw the extreme moderation on even the word 'Luigi' or pictures of the character on Reddit -- They were trying to prevent a social contagion scenario.
With that said I'm curious what you think would have to happen in Westernsociety for this kind of thing to take off? The person above paints a pretty bleak picture of AMerica where healthcare is tied to employment and people are facing the prospect of mass unemployment.
Are people just going to sit there and die? Or sit there and watch their family members die while they see the ultra wealthy flaunt their wealth on social media?
Young people were already struggling to build lives and families before the AI recession. It’s hard to fathom having any hope for raising a family or finding meaningful work in the PE slop driven economy.